YouSaid · the spoken record

Isabel Wilkerson

lines on the record: 55
first: 2020-08-21
most recent: 2020-08-21
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“And then when someone steps out of that place, then you kind of throws everything off because everyone has been trained to know where everyone fits. So I describe caste as the bones of this artificial infrastructure, of this invisible infrastructure. It's the bones. And then race in the iteration that I'm speaking about is the skin. So castes the bones and raises the skin. Race becomes the signifier of where one is assigned in the artificial hierarchy that was ultimately created or grew out of the colonizing of the United States, what now becomes.”
2020-08-21 · Intelligence Squared · The Hidden Power of Caste, with Isabel Wilkerson and Yassmin Abdel-Magied · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, well caste is a focus on the structure. I mean, I actually became quite fascinated with the iterations of the term caste, however it might be spelled in English. And of course, caste originates from the Portuguese word that refers also to race. So they're all interconnected. So you think about the caste on arm that you might put to hold the fractured bones in place. The idea of boundaries and holding people in a fixed location. And then you think about the cast in a play, people who are characters in a play, and they are all assigned a play, stage right, stage left in the foreground, in the background, and everyone knows their place. Everyone knows the script for and the lines that they are to say. And in fact, if you really are invested in the play, then you know the entire script and you know what everyone is supposed to say and where everyone's supposed to be.”
2020-08-21 · Intelligence Squared · The Hidden Power of Caste, with Isabel Wilkerson and Yassmin Abdel-Magied · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“and those who were enslaved at the very, very bottom of the hierarchy, it could have been any number of metrics, but that was a metric that was used in that we live under the shadow of that metric to this day.”
2020-08-21 · Intelligence Squared · The Hidden Power of Caste, with Isabel Wilkerson and Yassmin Abdel-Magied · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“exist in many forms, many, many societies. And so I'm focusing in primarily on the United States with, of course, a nod to Britain, which is the originating location that was so important in founding the United States, but also looking toward other hierarchies to better understand what's happened in the United States. And one thing to note about caste is that any number of metrics could be used in establishing a caste system. One's lineage, religion, geography. In the United States context, in the context of what came out of the transatlantic slave trade was the idea that the metric that was used was what people look like, their origins primarily, say, for example, people originated in Africa were transported to the New World to be enslaved and thus emerging thus a graded ranking of value with people who were the colonists in the dominant group.”
2020-08-21 · Intelligence Squared · The Hidden Power of Caste, with Isabel Wilkerson and Yassmin Abdel-Magied · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, that's such a great question. I mean, caste is an ancient term. It's for ancient series of hierarchies. And in the American context, this is a book that's primarily about the American context for understanding hierarchy. And so in the context in which I am describing it, caste is an artificial hierarchy, graded ranking of human value in a society in which so many aspects of a person's characteristics determine standing, respect the benefit of the doubt accorded a person, access to resources or the denial of access to resources, assumptions of competence and intelligence and beauty even. So those are the aspects that a caste system and the context in which I'm using it in understanding the American hierarchy exists. One other thing about caste is that these hierarchies, these embedded hierarchies”
2020-08-21 · Intelligence Squared · The Hidden Power of Caste, with Isabel Wilkerson and Yassmin Abdel-Magied · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source